A Waddle of Penguins

On Friday I went to my monkey’s school to do an art project with the first graders. I have been doing this for years and my only constant has been to use recycled materials. The kids feel involved when they bring stuff from home whether it be cereal boxes, newspaper or toilet paper rolls. I always tell them they are saving the world.
Mrs. M wanted me to do an art project with penguins as the theme so I came up with toilet paper roll penguins. I thought it would be really cool to get a picture of a waddle of penguins but that was a fou-fou fantasy. (The Penguin Association had a meeting in 2000 and decided that a group of penguins should be called a waddle- if on land and a raft- if in water).

This is the penguin my monkey made.

Using cereal boxes, I made templates to trace and cut out. I usually encourage more freedom based art projects so I told the kids they could use any colors they wanted. There was one pink penguin.

The kids have been working on shapes in math so I used recognizable shapes as templates.

One rectangle to cover the whole roll
One rectangle to make the belly
One diamond for the beak
One hexagon for the feet
Two ovals for the wings
My insurance policy for this project was googly eyes. They LOVED the googly eyes.